FRISCO — One can go in several different directions to illustrate the dominance of the Cowboys offense at this particular point of the season.
No team has amassed more yards than Dallas through the first five weeks. The team’s average of 34 points a game is nosed out only by Buffalo at 34.4 points.
Dallas is coming off a game in which it threw for 300-plus yards and ran for 200-plus yards for the first time in 38 years.
This group is so efficient, so explosive that it can put together a 98-yard drive — one that actually gained an additional 15 yards after being pushed back for a penalty — as it did in the fourth quarter of the win over the New York Giants and it barely creates a shrug.
Analytics will spotlight the rarity of this occurrence around the NFL, or we can simply turn it over to Ezekiel Elliott for a more personal observation.
“That 98-yard drive was super dope,” Elliott said.
How dope? You had Elliott start and end the drive with a run of 10 or more yards and a receiver in Cedrick Wilson who caught and threw a pass along the way.
The Dallas defense stopped the Giants on fourth-and-goal from the 2-yard line with just under 12:30 remaining. Quarterback Dak Prescott gathered his teammates around and told them to embrace the challenge.
“One play at a time,” he said. “Focus in on your job. Be disciplined, and we’ll look up and we’ll be in the end zone.”
Elliott picked up 10 yards off right guard on the first play. He followed that up with another 2 yards. Prescott threw a short pass to CeeDee Lamb that wound up being an 18-yard gain.
Not so fast. Right tackle Terence Steele let the Giants get in his head and was hit with an unnecessary roughness penalty, wiping out all but three yards of Lamb’s gain. Dallas had a first down on its own 17-yard line.
Head coach Mike McCarthy likes the physical edge Steele has displayed filling in for La’el Collins. But he spoke about the need for the second-year player to be more disciplined there.
Prescott had a brief talk with Steele.
“I told him, ‘Hey, tell them to look at the scoreboard or laugh at them,’” Prescott said. “The hell with it.
“But let’s not go backwards because of our own mistakes.’’
Kellen Moore’s creativity caught the Giants defense off guard on the first play after the penalty. The Cowboys offensive coordinator had Prescott flip the ball to Wilson. The safety immediately went to Lamb, so Wilson’s eyes went to Noah Brown.
If Wilson got a little more on the ball it could have been a touchdown. But Brown had to slow down to make the catch. It still wound up being a 22-yard gain to get the Cowboys out of the shadow of their own goalposts.
What did Prescott think of his competition at quarterback?
“I thought he did OK,” Prescott said after laughing. “He completed the pass.
“We’ve got high expectations for Ced and wouldn’t ask him to throw the ball if we didn’t. But at the end of it, I told Ced, ‘It’s a little tougher at this point huh? Being wide open almost seems harder.’”
Elliott picked up 2 yards on the next play, and Tony Pollard stung the defense for seven yards, setting up a third-and-1.
Wilson was back in his familiar receiver role here, hauling in a 35-yard pass from Prescott, putting the ball on the New York 17-yard line.
Pollard picked up 4 yards, then Elliott went around right end for 13 yards — his fifth run of the game of 10 or more yards — for the touchdown.
“The long drive, the 98-yarder, to do that at that point of the game, I thought was the most important series of the game for us offensively,” McCarthy said.
The nine-play, 98-yard drive consumed 4:48 and pushed the Cowboys’ lead to 34-13.
“Being able to celebrate with them on the sidelines and saying, ‘Hey, we talked about it, but to go do it is another thing,’” Prescott said. “When we’re focused and when we’re all playing and doing our one job, that’s what we expect.
“That’s why our standards are so high.”
As Elliott would say, that’s super dope.
Catch David Moore and Robert Wilonsky as they co-host Intentional Grounding on The Ticket (KTCK-AM 1310 and 96.7 FM) every Wednesday night from 7-8 p.m. through the Super Bowl.
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